When Has a Boston Celebrity Arrived?

When her fancy vacation home is featured in the New York Times, and she's pilloried on Slate.com for having the gumption to show off that home, of course. Susan Orlean, New Yorker regular and a Boston resident since 1982 (and former Globe and Phoenix staffer), lately had her upstate New York weekend pad featured in the Times's impossibly bourgie "House Proud" section (in which people much richer than Bostonist demurely share details about their palatial abodes). OK, whatever - a Boston writer had the good fortune to gain wide acclaim (bringing considerable riches, we imagine) and marry a rich guy to boot - big deal. This would have eluded our notice were it not for the fact that Timothy Noah at Slate thinks there is something terribly untoward about journalists (even softer-side-of, human-interest-book-writin' journalists) showing off their riches.

To a certain degree, Bostonist understands Noah's position: "I don't begrudge Orlean her delight in her new abode," he writes. "But what possessed her to broadcast it to millions of New York Times readers?" Fair enough, but really, Bostonist isn't in the business of holding forth cogently on journalistic ethics or what makes rich people do the stuff they do. What we are in the business of (aside from typos) is being unabashedly excited when a local makes good on the national stage, and having your weird-lookin' house in the New York Times counts as making good in Bostonist's book. (We'd prefer a local on MTV Cribs, but we seem to remember hearing not so long ago that Boston hip hop's senior statesman, Ed O.G., had actually moved back in with his mom in the 'Bury.) Seriously, though, have you ever seen the pictures of society parties in Boston Magazine? Every person there is either a Celtic, a Patriot, or some random guy who works at Fidelity. We need all the weird, high-society connections and gossip page mentions we can get.

So Bostonist says, congratulations to you, Susan Orlean, for being rich, famous, successful, and having your house's "boatlike detailing" celebrated in the Times. We hear from a friend who had occasion to see your Fort Point pad that it's pretty damn sweet too (orignal Warhols and such), so if you want that featured, just invite Bostonist over for drinks and we'll bring our camera.

(Also, while we're on the topic of New York media hype of Boston's own, how 'bout Massholes representing on Gawker's latest celebrity sighting column: Eliza Dushku, Dennis Leary, and Matt Damon all in one post? Boston really is the hotbed of culture and celebrity we always imagined!)

(Also, while we're tacking on parenthetical paragraphs that start with "Also," why in hell do we care about any of this anyway?)

Susan Orlean, Boston's own New-York-Times-featured, too-rich, fancy-vacation-home-owning writer.